Drawing on the case of business school rankings, we study how institutions are
maintained and remain persistent despite their contested nature. We argue that rankings
as institutions can be maintained through subtle disciplinary practices that freeze power
relations in recipient organizations. Our analysis rests on a Foucauldian understanding
of control emphasizing that rankings discipline (1) by enhancing the visibility of
individuals’ performance, (2) by defining ‘normal’ behavior, and (3) by shaping how
people understand themselves and the world around them. We show that these three
disciplining effects support rankings’ durability, reproducibility, and communicability
enhancing their overall stability and diffusion. Our arguments demonstrate that
rankings’ relevance and impact is not entirely based on the legitimacy they are able to
offer to ranked schools. Rather rankings impel a variety of disciplinary effects within
business schools which help to stabilize and diffuse the institution.

The present study is based on a large scale panel survey and uses the German market for profiling
the consumer of ecological margarine. We analyze how this consumer differs from the mainstream
consumer. Consumers of ecological margarine are categorized as light- , medium-, heavy-users and
loyalists. Also, we explore why some consumers - when being asked - intend to buy ecological
margarine but do not purchase the product (and vice versa). A cluster analysis of non-purchasers of
ecological margarine shows at least one sizeable cluster of non-purchasers possess views on ecostatements
that are more eco-prone than loyal purchasers of eco-margarine. Several other interesting
findings are revealed. Implications for promotion of ecological margarine are discussed (not in the
present draft but at the conference).

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The self-generated validity theory (Feldman and Lynch 1988) uses the following arguments: First, re-existing intentions may become more accessible in memory when the researcher asks the question. The measurement process thereby leads survey respondents to form judgments that they otherwise would not access in their memory or that they otherwise would not form. Second, higher relative accessibility of intentions, compared with other inputs for purchase decisions may make subsequent purchase behavior more consistent with prior intentions. A couple of studies provide support of the self-generated validity theory for public opinion (Simmons, Bickart, and Lynch 1993) and marketing research (Fitzsimons and Morwitz 1996; Morwitz and Fitzsimons 2004; Morwitz, Johnson, and Schmittlein 1993). While the self-generated validity theory may apply for high involvement products it does not seem to affect moderate and low involvement product categories.

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Qualitative studies are associated with interviews, focus groups and
observations. We introduce experiments as a way of dealing with such studies. In
contrast to the common focus on how many respondents choose a particular
behaviour we focus on how much a design affect the individual. This is often
concerned with analysing the effect of a design. The approach is bottom up, in that
the inferences are concerned with each individual. This enables us to look at the
variation between people. We consider the common preference profile, defined as
that part of the individual preference profiles which is shared by all individuals. A
variation seen by the individual means that the message is received with its
complexity and meaningfulness, while a big ideosyncratic variations means people
understand different things and a Babylonian confusion is the outcome. Findings may
be generalized after the effect has been measured at an individual level.

The maturing of Web 2.0 infrastructure fosters the
rapid generation and dissemination of electronic wordof-
mouth (e-WOM). The abundance of e-WOM allows
online service providers to facilitate consumers’ trust
building. However, due to the often coexistence of two
forms of e-WOM, namely numerical rating and
opinionated review, consumers can perceive cognitive
dissonance between the former and the latter. This
cognitive dissonance can hinder the formation of
consumers’ trust and compel them to resolve the
conflict. Guided by confirmation bias theory, we
propose that, to maintain trusting beliefs when
experiencing dissonance in e-WOM, male consumers
value opinionated review over numerical rating and
vice versa for their female counterparts. The results of
our field survey on a custom developed website with
115 college students empirically validated our
hypothesized relationships and also unveiled male’s
general bias towards opinionated review. Our findings
can contribute to both research and practice.

Multi-business firms should design the task portfolio of their headquarters (HQ) and the way
HQ tasks are carried out so that net value creation results. While the strategic management
literature has emphasized such parenting benefits, less attention has been paid to the costs that
may inadvertently be caused by HQ actions. Using a simple game theory model, we analyze
the motivational costs that may result from HQ intervention in subunits. Along the lines of the
procedural justice literature, we identify the conditions under which these costs may be
influenced by the existence of fairness expectations among subunit managers. Our analysis of
the dynamic game between HQ and subunits has novel and non-intuitive results. For example,
we find that good parenting may involve forgoing opportunities for value-creation, and that
procedural justice systems may sometimes be counterproductive. Our findings contribute to
both the HQ and the procedural justice literatures.

A system can be customized by is owner. The fundamental premise behind designing for customization is that it improves the user experience (UX) of the system. In this study, we contend that the effects of customization on UX of a smartphone can be theoretically modelled as users’ beliefs about the system object (customization) that influence their attitudes towards the system object (perceived system usability), which in turn shapes their beliefs (flow) and attitudes (engagement) towards using the system. We tested this proposition via an experimental study with 50 college students as participants. Each participant was asked to perform customization tasks on a smartphone, and then instructed to complete a comparison task aimed at contrasting customized user interface with a standard one. Our manipulation checks confirmed that the customization task, in particular, the customization of the layout was more pronounced for participants. Analytical results from the comparison reveal that customization positively influence users’ evaluation of three key constructs of UX: perceived system usability,
flow and engagement, and that the feeling of engagement is mediated through perceived system usability and flow. We conclude with a discussion of the impact of customization on UX, and whether the distinction between object- and behaviour-based beliefs and attitudes is helpful.

Acquisitions of new businesses and divestments of existing ones are
frequently components of large organizations’ corporate strategies.
In both acquisitions and divestments, corporate IT infrastructure
plays a critical role for realizing business objectives. In this paper, we
take a dual view of the IT-related challenges in divestment and
acquisition strategies, studying them as a single integrated
transaction between a buyer and a seller and investigating how the
IT carve-out and IT integration strategies influence each other. The
extant literature on the interaction between carve-outs and
integration strategies is an empty set. Here, we begin to shed light to
the limitations of the carve-out contract, the processes of carving out
a business unit from one and integrating it into another multibusiness
organization, asymmetries in both parties’ preferences for
an IT transaction process and its influence on arising challenges and
organization performance.

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Industrial and institutional revolution in the district of Aachen (Aix‐la‐Chapelle), 1800‐1860

Reckendrees, Alfred(Frederiksberg, 2012)

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In the first half of the 19th century, the industrial district of Aachen was a small dynamic economic
region in the West of the Prussian Rhineland. It was a leading industrial region in terms
of production and a region in which modern economic institutions advanced modern industrial
organizations. The regional institutional arrangements were partly based on the French law:1
During the French Revolutionary Wars, the West of the Rhineland had been a part of France
with the region of Aachen (see maps 1 and 2) forming the Département de la Roer. After the
French defeat in 1814, the Rhineland was integrated as the Rhineprovince into the Prussian
State, but with very few exceptions the French legal system continued. The French code de
commerce rather than the Prussian civil law constructed the norms of business and commercial
activities2 and institutional arrangements that had emerged in the ‘French period’ continued
to influence regional economic development. Not only property rights and civil rights, also
other institutions of French origin like chambers of trade and commerce, commercial courts, or
collective institutions for the settlement of work related conflicts shaped economic behaviour.
3 New Prussian laws did not dramatically influence regional economic development; only
the Railroad Law (1838) and the Prussian Joint Stock Companies Law (Preußisches Aktiengesetz)
of 1843 had a certain impact. Just like the General German Trade Law (Allgemeines
deutsches Handelsgesetzbuch) of 1861, the Joint Stock Company Law was based on French
ideas and aimed at modernizing the Prussian economy. It perhaps helped developing the eastern
parts of Prussia towards a more capitalistic economy; for the region of Aachen it mainly
introduced more oversight from the Prussian State. The Prussian integration of the Rhineland
did, of course, also induce some economically relevant change; this regards e.g. the introduction
of the Prussian currency or the Prussian trade union. These aspects will be discussed later.

Effective strategy-making in turbulent industries needs current insights that can inform ongoing decisions around adaptive strategic moves. Frontline employees involved in the daily business transactions are the first to see the subtle changes not otherwise observed by top managers. Top management with dominant logics anchored in previous business contexts usually receive updated information from performance reports for prior periods. All the while, we discern a human inclination linked to the position of power where managers subconsciously discard updated information from frontline employees. We present an experiment to investigate these effects and discuss the implications for strategic response capabilities among firms.

Judging from the number of communities and cities striving or claiming to be sustainable and how often eco-development is invoked as the means for urban regeneration, it appears that sustainable and eco-development have become “the leading paradigm within urban development” (Whitehead 2003). But what is it that is driving these urban transformations? Clearly, there are many probable answers to this complex question and in what follows we will focus on one particular catalyst of change – urban design competitions. Considered as field changing events (Lampel & Meyer 2008, Anand and Jones 2008), urban design competitions are understudied mechanisms for bringing about field level changes. This paper examines how urban design competitions can bring about changes within two types of fields – professional fields and local geographical fields. The context for our study is urban regeneration in two cities in France and Denmark, both of which have been suffering from industrial decline and have invested in establishing “eco-districts”. Based on these two case studies we explore how the different parties involved in these urban development projects have developed innovative design templates and practices that can instantiate field level changes.

We outline commonalities between studies of subsidiary decentralization and autonomous strategy-making in the international business and strategic management fields. This suggests that corporate headquarters should engage in strategy-making processes that provide a combination of formal direction for global efficiencies and autonomy for effective local responses. Strategic guidance from headquarters frames subsidiary decisions in line with corporate priorities and distributed decision power coupled with informal exchange of information facilitates strategic responses in tune with local market requirements. We identify some important nuances in the integration-responsiveness conundrum supported by an empirical study of 351 multinational subsidiaries. We discuss the implications for multinational strategy practice and suggest future research venues to investigate strategy-making in multinational firms.

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The International IPSERA Workshop on Customer Attractiveness, Supplier Satisfaction and Customer Value. 25-26 November 2010

Ellegaard, Chris; Freytag, Per V.(Frederiksberg, 2010)

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Reports on supply chain management (SCM) failure are becoming more frequent in the SCM literature, despite widespread recognition of the business potential associated with such optimizations of operational buyer-supplier interfaces. Some failures can be ascribed to imbalances in the net benefits realized by the buying and supplying company implementing SCM. Failed SCM initiatives hurt the buying company’s customer attractiveness and limit opportunities for long term value creation with suppliers. Hence, an important task for the buying company is the management of SCM initiatives in a way that benefits both parties. However, SCM costs and benefits often materialise as the result of complex interactive processes between buyer and supplier actors, which makes SCM a challenging management task. To increase the understanding of these complex processes, this study identifies the various types of supplier costs and benefits resulting from the failed VMI initiative of a multinational company. While the benefits from this case turn out to be few, the costs appear in large variety and scale. More importantly, we uncover the underlying mechanisms generating these costs, thereby enabling managers to identify and avoid the costs. Based on the findings, we propose pre-project classification of supplier VMI readiness to allow more beneficial implementation as a key managerial implication.

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Corporate language policies and particularly the use of English as a corporate language have
been studied in MNCs for almost two decades now. Despite these volumes of research, very
little has been written about the implementation of new language policies. Few studies have
examined resistance to or the process of implementing a corporate language, and even fewer
have investigated the employee perspective empirically. The present study uses observational
and focus group data to investigate reactions to a new corporate language policy in one
Danish MNC. The study draws on sociolinguistic stancetaking theory and ethnographic
methods and seeks to understand what contextual factors influence employees’ stances
towards the introduction of English as a corporate language. English language competence,
the local linguistic context and different temporal perspectives are found to be key factors.
The paper aims to bring the fields of language in international business and linguistic
anthropology together in a study of the barriers experienced in companies implementing a
new language policy. The paper contributes to the field of language in international business
by exploring when and why corporate language policies encounter resistance. As such the
results will shed light on the implementation phase of language policy-making.

Recent advances within the dynamic capabilities view emphasize the “sensing” of
employees as an important part of the micro-foundations of dynamic capabilities: By
putting in place organizational processes that mobilize and exploit information gathered
by individual employees from their operating environment, firms can update insights
about performance outcomes and improve strategic decision-making. We test empirically
the extent to which firms can ascertain performance outcomes by drawing on employee
knowledge. Our empirical setting is the Scandinavian hospitality sector with respondents
among frontline service employees. Using a time series approach, we show that
employee respondents (collectively) assess medium-term organizational performance
better than management and the financial models available to them.

Previous research tends to overemphasize frictions, cultural clashes and communication breakdowns in virtual teams. The author aims at exploring positive aspects of cross-cultural collaboration and identifying some of the conditions underlying trust-building, employee motivation and team effectiveness.
Whereas much research on virtual teams has taken its point of departure in Western MNCs and primarily addressed headquarter concerns, this case study of a Danish MNC´s Indian R & D site gives voice to Indian managers and employees and explores through semi-structured interviews and observations how they perceive communication and collaboration within multinational and multicultural R & D teams, and how they try to find common ground.
Based on the interviews accounts, there are several enablers of virtual team collaboration: advanced information and communication technology facilitated virtual communication, and high English-language proficiency among the engineers at different R & D sites made dialogue and knowledge exchange feasible. Moreover, team members shared a strong professional identity as engineers and technicians, and they displayed a strong identification with the MNC, a world leader in the wind power industry.
Perceived national differences in leadership and communication style played a minor role, maybe because the majority of Indian managers and employees had previous experience working in other Western MNCs. Some of the Indian managers and employees were even able to act as boundary-spanners between headquarters and the Indian R&D site due to their study and work experiences in other business environments.
Culture courses that introduced the Danish and Indian team members to a North European communication and management style, and to an Indian respectively, were introduced on the initiative of the Danish managing director, who - in contrast to the HR department - recognized the importance of facilitating the virtual teamwork through cultural awareness training. Suggestions for further cultural learning processes are given.

Most software development companies are very small with only 1-10 employees. In developing countries such companies play an important role both locally and as providers of software and services to customers in other parts of the world. Understanding and improving their project management (PM) practices are, therefore, important not only in the local context, but also in the context of globalized software development. This paper explores actual PM
practices in Pakistani Small Software development Shops (SSDS). We find PM challenges in addition to challenges reported by software engineering literature, and we have described the implications of those challenges on quality and productivity of Pakistani SSDSs. We also find that some Pakistani SSDS practices are similar to what is reported from SSDSs in other parts of the world, but other practices are related to the companies' position in the global software development chain.

Because interventions related to diet and other health behaviours are seldom successful and/or sustainable, it is extremely important to identify the individual factors that contribute to a healthier or unhealthier diet. To this end, we use cross-sectional data from the IDEFICS study to analyse the dietary behaviour of children aged between 2 and 9 years in eight European countries. We model the complex nature of these individual factors using structural equation modelling. Our results show that both sedentary behaviour and food exposure are strong contributors to children’s dietary choices. However, although we find a positive relation between a healthy diet and weight status for girls, weight status appears independent of diet quality for boys. These outcomes, although they permit no firm conclusions on health policy strategies, clearly suggest that further research based on longitudinal data could provide valuable insights for the design of successful prevention and intervention strategies.